Manhattan

In the summer of 1986, before my senior year of college, I was staying with my girlfriend, Nina, and her father, John Szarkowski, the critic and longtime director of photography at MOMA, at her family’s Fifth Avenue apartment. Nina’s mother and younger sister were spending the summer at their upstate country house, where John joined them on weekends. Her parents were fond of me, but no doubt I was allowed to shack up there because of another weekday resident, our classmate Carol, who ostensibly shared Nina’s bedroom. I bunked in the cramped maid’s quarters, behind the kitchen. We had summer internships (Nina at an investment bank, Carol at a nonprofit, I at Dell Publishing, where I plowed through slush piles of romance novels), and more often than not Carol stayed out late or all night. So essentially it was just Nina, her father, and me, and in the evenings Nina would throw together a simple dinner or order Chinese takeout, while I was in charge of drinks. There was no cocktail hour at my parents’ house, in suburban Syracuse; we drank water or roasted-corn tea with an early dinner, and on the rare occasions my father felt like having a beer I’d open a couple of Genesee Cream Ales, though he flushed bright red whenever he drank and I’d always end up finishing his. That summer on Fifth Avenue, I’d pour Nina a glass of white Burgundy or champagne—she was preternaturally cultivated. John’s preferred cocktail was a perfect Manhattan, which he taught me how to prepare.

The recipe called for equal parts sweet and dry vermouth to compliment the whiskey, rather than all sweet, which makes a classic Manhattan. John’s version was drier still, with a whiskey-to-vermouth ratio of four to one (instead of two to one), plus the customary dash of bitters, and a sliver of orange peel rather than lemon—though in a pinch, he told me, lemon would be fine. It surprised me that he was not doctrinaire about whether I used bourbon or rye, or a particular brand of vermouth, or even whether the concoction was shaken or stirred before being served “up.” He did object to a Maraschino cherry or its juice, saying that they fouled an honest drink and revealed a “suspect character.”

That was a notion I didn’t want him entertaining. The oddness of our living situation made me anxious enough, and sometimes I wondered if he might suddenly order me to pack my bags. John was a discerning man, and he must have heard the sound of footsteps in the middle of the night, or considered what might be happening on the weekends after he took the train upstate.

But that first Manhattan of the night seemed to ease any awkwardness between us. John would take a healthy sip, let the drink cool his throat, and in his sonorous Wisconsin accent pronounce, “Fine work, Chaa-ng,” the refrain that rang in our evenings. Then we’d eat with gusto and open a bottle of inky Côtes du Rhône. After Nina and I had washed the dishes, she’d work on some spreadsheets or a needlepoint (she loved figures and order) and I would sit with John in the study as he packed his rosewood pipe, a Mets or a Yankees game on TV, and we’d talk about Darryl Strawberry’s swing, divesting from South Africa, Balzac vs. Flaubert.

My parents and I talked mostly about whether I was eating and sleeping enough, and then studying something they hoped might someday prove useful. With John, I could jest and curse and argue, give wild voice to my thoughts, and, if I overshot with my ignorance and bombast or muddled the matter with a bout of plain confusion, he’d suspend the dialogue with a groan of “Oh, C-R!” and re-stoke the pipe bowl, using his thumb as a damper, before steering me back to the issue at hand. Sometimes we’d keep talking after the late news, Nina having long since said good night. She was pleased by how well her father and I got along, though her narrowed eyes would tell me there would be no bothering her that night.

I didn’t mind. The apartment was ours from Friday morning to Monday dusk, enough time to exhaust even a college couple’s desires. We threw glittery cocktail parties and served gimlets and Black Velvets, knowingly playing the high life. I was taking Manhattan, with my smart, beautiful girl, a view of the Park grandly spread before us. But, as much as I adored Nina, I welcomed the moment when John reappeared, when I would set out the bottles of Old Grand-Dad and Cinzano, along with the bitters and the martyr orange I pulled from the fridge, rudely scalped and desiccating at its peeled edges, and mix it up for us, knowing above all that the drink should be cold, it should be bracing, it should be downright perfect, if never exactly the same. ♦

Chang-rae Lee teaches creative writing at Princeton. “On Such a Full Sea” is his latest novel.